Liga l Round 10: FC Barcelona - Granada 1-0

Barça nead to rotate less i midfield i think, play Gomez for a couple of weeks and see how he do.

Problem with us is that sometimes our biggest asset is our weakness...we play technical and beautiful football, we can't just scrap the results or keep on wining like Madrid sides. So even if we win but don't play that good form couple of games we could be in trouble.

With Iniesta out, we lack creativity in the midfield. The one player who could replace Iniesta is Messi. How about moving him to midfield and playing Rafinha or Arda up frint?

Altomonte said:

With Iniesta out, we lack creativity in the midfield. The one player who could replace Iniesta is Messi. How about moving him to midfield and playing Rafinha or Arda up frint?

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That would actually work and it would have the added merit to give him some respite energy wise. With Don injured, he and ney were both forced to drop deeper in the midfield. This is really taxing on the system, specially if done continually. + both Arda and Rafi have been in good scoring form this year

ps. but who's frint? lol

Staying up till 2:00 AM to watch this kind of game...no easy task lol.

I agree with Serghei on this - our play just doesn't seem..right. Even in the games we win 4-1 or whatever, it always looks like something just isn't right. It's all good saying "3 points is 3 points", but we aren't at that stage in the season right now. The 3 points aren't going to do us good if we are going to get beat by better teams. We need to sort out our midfield, as strong teams are bound to cause us problems, as we've already seen a couple of times this season.

I was watching Arsenals game the other day, and though they are inconsistent and don't have real quality up front, their passing and movement in midfield is far better than ours at this point. They were facing a bus too, I forget which team. I'm just trying to understand why we've completely stopped playing 1-touch football?

Every player always wants to take that extra touch, and the passing across midfield seems so laboured. Nobody is willing,or more concerningly, able to play quick passing football in tight spaces, apart from the front 3. I think this has been a trend we've noticed since Enrique took over as coach, but it seems to have completely stopped this season. Watching Madrid's game, the likes of Kovacic, Kroos, Marcelo, Isco - they play the ball quick and are able to make space. Of course, they have a pretty crap front 3 compared to ours, so don't convert as many as they should, but I'm quite worried at what lies ahead this season for Barcelona.

serghei said:

This is part of what's wrong. We should never neglect the yellow passing option from our arsenal, especially not against Granada. Yes, it's the harder way forward, but the yellow pass is our trademark as a team. And so far this season, I saw too few of those. We're abusing the red pass though, from CB to fullbacks or long ball, and that's frustrating, especially against Granada.

Also, I expect our CM (Rafinha here) to be able to receive in that space and play a good ball from there. If not, tap it back.

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Completely agree with you and that's what pisses me the most right now, because that's forcing Messi and Neymar to go way deep trying to (1) carry the ball and dribble everyone or (2) force a "yellow pass" to a completely isolated Suarez.

I don't think our midfield options are bad, I just think they are "playing wrong", but the worst part of it is that they are probably just following Lucho instructions.

I am honestly worried, because I can't see Barça going far on Champions League playing that way.

mark1nhu said:

Completely agree with you and that's what pisses me the most right now, because that's forcing Messi and Neymar to go way deep trying to (1) carry the ball and dribble everyone or (2) force a "yellow pass" to a completely isolated Suarez.

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Exactly. We're just using MSN for everything. That's bad. None of our midfielders are playing in the hole. Everyone is either going wide, or making runs without anyone passing to them.

serghei said:

.. We're just using MSN for everything. That's bad. None of our midfielders are playing in the hole..

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Just hope they don't get swallowed up

View attachment 7042 and turned into holograms

mark1nhu said:

Completely agree with you and that's what pisses me the most right now, because that's forcing Messi and Neymar to go way deep trying to (1) carry the ball and dribble everyone or (2) force a "yellow pass" to a completely isolated Suarez.

I don't think our midfield options are bad, I just think they are "playing wrong", but the worst part of it is that they are probably just following Lucho instructions.

I am honestly worried, because I can't see Barça going far on Champions League playing that way.

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Let me ask you something, out of curiosity. Do you think that if instead of Rafinha in that picture I posted would've been Xavi, Mascherano would've passed it to him?

Maybe this is the single biggest area where we're missing Xavi. Players used to pass the ball to him almost instinctively because they knew he would control it perfectly almost every time. Now that passing option is gone simply because there is no Xavi, and no midfielder from our team has the trust of the teammates to receive the ball there, in the hole as they say. Problem, as you say, is that Messi is no midfielder and doesn't have the required workrate to be one.

Only midfielder who has the skill to play there and receive in that space and make a pass from that pretty crowded space is Arda Turan.

serghei said:

Let me ask you something, out of curiosity. Do you think that if instead of Rafinha in that picture I posted would've been Xavi, Mascherano would've passed it to him?

Maybe this is the single biggest area where we're missing Xavi. Players used to pass the ball to him almost instinctively because they knew he would control it perfectly almost every time. Now that passing option is gone simply because there is no Xavi, and no midfielder from our team has the trust of the teammates to receive the ball there, in the hole as they say. Problem, as you say, is that Messi is no midfielder and doesn't have the required workrate to be one.

Only midfielder who has the skill to play there and receive in that space and make a pass from that pretty crowded space is Arda Turan.

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I think the player in the position is not the problem, but actually how Lucho (who I love, to make it clear) sees and understands football.

If I recall correctly, Lucho already said in the past something along the lines of "possession is not the key, but actually switching flanks", which explains (IMHO) why we don't make short passes in the middle anymore. We keep circling the opponent's box without actually using the middle (not the midfield, I mean the middle of the pitch in front of the box).

He is not wrong about the power of "switching flanks" but we cannot be completely dependent on it, the same way we cannot be dependent on tiki-tala. We need (and we certainly can!!!) to be versatile, IMHO.